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Slot Machine with Bad Software Sends Players To Jail
dcollins writes "Previous discussions here have turned into debates over who is liable for faulty software: the programmers, the publisher, etc. Yahoo has a new option: perhaps the users are criminally liable for using the software. From the AP: 'Prosecutors are considering criminal charges against casino gamblers who won big on a slot machine that had been installed with faulty software ... A decision on whether to bring criminal charges could come in a couple of weeks, said John Colin, chief deputy prosecutor for Harrison County. He said 'criminal intent' may be involved when people play a machine they know is faulty.' Would your average user be able to distinguish 'faulty software' from 'lucky'?"
I have mixed feelings about this.
On the one hand, the casino should bear at least some of the responsibility for allowing a faulty machine to give away its money. I think it's entirely reasonable to expect them to inspect equipment for such glaring problems before installing it and letting the public have at it.
On the other hand, if a slot machine has the fact that it costs one dollar to play prominently displayed, and you get ten dollars' worth of credit when you insert your dollar, it's painfully obvious to any reasonable person that the machine is messed up. The people playing most certainly should have reported the error, or at the very least, not exploited it.
At the very least, I think the casino would--and should--have a very strong civil case against the people who exploited the bug and who didn't return the money. If the opposite happened, that people only got one dollar's worth of credit when they inserted a ten-dollar bill, you'd better believe there would have been hell to pay, and maybe even a lawsuit over it. Just because the error is in favor of the customer instead of the company doesn't shift the morality of the issue. As a matter of public relations, though, it might be in the casino's best interest not to push the issue, or to push the issue with the people who programmed the slots incorrectly instead of their paying customers.
As for criminal charges, although I think that exploiting the machines is a pretty scummy thing to do, I have a hard time thinking it should be escalated to the level of a crime. Like I said, the casino should bear some responsibility for the mistake. Even if exploiting the machine should be considered some sort of theft or cheating, what happened could be considered enticement to commit a crime that one wouldn't otherwise normally commit. That's entrapment, and that is illegal itself.
Here in Manhattan Beach, I found a gas station that gives me premium for $0.41/gallon. Apparently, whoever set the pump price screwed up, as the posted price was $4.09/gallon, but they don't notice because no one else at the gas station used premium. I must have gotten hundreds of dollars of free gas off that one pump so far. Does that mean I can be jailed? Just because I'm taking advantage of someone else's screwup?
Solomon
"Twice half-assed makes an ass whole." --Solomon K. Chang
If you put $10 into this slot machine and it gave you $1 in credit, you'd be up shit creek. If you put $100 in and it gave you $0 credit, you'd be lucky to get the casino to comp your breakfast because you're sure as hell not getting $100 back.
!sympathy here.
I am not a lawyer, and this is not legal advice. For Entertainment Purposes Only.
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
Blackjack is a winnable game, but it is not "a simple set of rules" that will do it.
The rules you're referring to are called "Basic Strategy," which is a set of rules that will maximize your odds of winning in any given situation. All casinos I've ever been in allow you to actually keep Basic Strategy notes with you for reference. I've even seen them sold on cards in the gift shops of some casinos.
However, this set of rules will not give you an edge over the casino. All it does is lower the casino's edge over you.
The rules that will win at blackjack depend on counting cards. You have to keep track in your head of what's been played, at least in general terms of high cards vs. low cards. As low cards are played out of a shoe, the odds of the player winning go up, because high cards tend to bust dealer hands. The key is to bet more money when the shoe has a disproportionate number of high cards in it, and to bet less when the shoe has a normal distribution or when the shoe has a disproportionate number of low cards in it.
In some places such as Las Vegas, casinos have the legal right to bar players they suspect of counting cards. In others such as Atlantic City, they don't. In those places, casinos compensate by having dealers at tables with card counters shuffle the shoes much more often, sometimes after every single hand. By doing so, any advantage a card counter may have is negated, and the odds will always be in favor of the casino.
Obviously, pit bosses and security personnel in casinos are trained to spot card counters. The casino has computers itself that can analyze the odds of the player and casino at any point in a shoe, and if they see players vary their bets according to where those odds lie, they know they've got a counter on their hands and can ban them. Casinos have also been known to hire card counters to watch for betting variations of other counters and report them. Also, casinos maintain databases of known card counters so that professionals are instantly spotted and never even get a chance to play in their own favor.
But the set of rules to be a counter is not simple. In fact, most casinos actually LIKE it when people who think they can count cards come. The thing is, if you screw it up, you will lose a lot of money, because you'll be betting large amounts when the odds are not in your favor. Casinos get far more money from people who screw up card counting than they lose to people who can actually pull it off. For one thing, you're having to keep running counts of at least two numbers (more, if you want better odds) in your head. For another, you're actually having to play the game, and the guy sitting beside you at the table doesn't want to wait 30 seconds for you to decide whether to hit or stand after every card. For another, when you're trying to count cards, you're typically trying to do it in some non-obvious way so that if you're successful, you won't be banned or shuffled up on. It's hard to act all casual like you're not intensely concentrating on something when in reality you are. For yet another, casinos are by their nature very distracting places, with lots of commotion, yelling, dinging slot machines, and so on. As if that weren't enough, while you're at the tables, you'll have waitresses who are generally very attractive coming by repeatedly offering you free drinks, and counting cards while drunk is infinitely harder than counting them while sober.
Caesars lost $487,000 on the machine during that time, state police said.
Did they really "lose" money or did they just not make as much as they normally would have? Did the machine pay out during this time, or is it that players got to play 10x more per dollar, and therefore Caesars "lost" money?
The other possible take on it, that I can see, goes like this: If they put in $5 and got 50 attempts instead of 5, but they won $1000 on attempt #50, they owe the casio $45 (for the unpaid for attempts) not the full $1000 that they won. If gambling is entertainment, then they owe the price of that entertainment, which at that machine is $1 per attempt. Wheither or not they "won" during one of those attempts is completely beside the point.
We are all just people.
In fact, I believe they do this on purpose as a psychological trick - you're losing points, you're not losing real money...
The issue of whether or not card counting constitutes cheating was and is a hot topic in the gaming industry with strong opinions on both sides of the issue. The courts have consistently ruled that it is not cheating, from the legal definition of cheating (i.e. the one that results in a criminal prosecution), to count cards provided that one is not assisted in this endeavor by any sort of device (i.e. mechanical, electronic, electro-mechanical, etc). The casinos on the other hand, not surprisingly, consider all forms of card counting, even the type that courts have ruled legal as "intelligent play" (i.e. using your brain), as "cheating".
Having some exposure to the gaming industry, ex-wife is professional poker dealer (just dealt the final table WSOP), and being a card counter myself, I have noticed that casinos, at least in small gambling communities, prefer card counters.
First of all, the courts have stated that casinos can only offer games of chance. If a casino wants to outlaw counting cards on the basis that card-counting pays the player, then, by definition, blackjack is not a game of chance and therefore cannot be offered by a casino.
Back to the point. Most blackjack players, quite frankly, suck, but think they are wizards. Every now and again, a good player walks into a casino, counts cards, tips well and keeps winning. What happens next? All of the gamblers walking by the table notice how "hot" the table is, sit down, and promptly empty their wallet.
One good, polite, well-tipping card counter will advertise the table, pay the dealers well and fill the house's coffers, while not costing the house much to pay the card counter.
More than one pit boss has approached me and asked how I was counting, and then asked if there was anything they could do for me -- food, drinks, etc.